My lover’s hands

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It will end, it will end, she said. It will come, it will come, when suddenly she added, We are in the hands of the Lord.

But instantly she was annoyed with herself for saying that. Who had said it? Not she; she had been trapped into saying something she did not mean.

Juliet:

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

Romeo:

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Juliet:

Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

Romeo:

O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;

They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Juliet:

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

Romeo:

Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.

… she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which cured and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!

He turned and saw her. Ah! She was lovely, lovelier now than ever he thought.

Image:

Achaemenid Persian, Servant with Bowls (5th Century BCE).

Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child (ca. 1507).

Hans Holbein the Younger, Derick Berck of Cologn, (1536).

North Netherlandish Painter, Countess of Egmond, (ca. 1516).

Sandro Boticelli and Workshop, The Virgin and Child, (ca. 1490).

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, (ca. 1530)

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Martyrdom of Saint Barbara, (ca. 1510).

Ludovico Carracci, The Lamentation, (ca. 1582).

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn), Woman with a Pink, (early 1660s).

Gustae Moreau, Jacob and the Angel, (1874-78).

Northern Song period, Eleven-Headed Guanyin, (985).

Käthe Kollwitz, Rest in the Peace of His Hands, (1935-36).

Hans Memling, The Annunciation, (1465-75).

Byzantine, Fragment of a Floor Mosaic with a Personification of Ktisis, (500-550).